Abstract:

Globalisation of education has become an enduring reality not only in the field of trade in goods but also in the field of trade in services. Fields such as education that were earlier considered to be beyond the reach of trade, are being increasingly sought to be brought under the purview of world trading bodies. The paper examines the scope of GATS negotiations on education, with particular reference to Developing Countries and argues that there are both risks and opportunities in globalizing education. This holds true for all forms of higher education, including Distance education. The Decade of the 90s can be regarded as the beginning of many epoch making events in international economics and politics. The Decade brought in multi lateral dominance over the issue areas that were till that point of time regarded as the primary domain of exclusive national decision making. Nowhere has it been more explicit than in the area of national education and related policies. Economics of Education made a major expansion when the WTO contracting parties propounded the view that Education was a legitimate field to be brought under the ambit of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). However, as in all major trade agreements, GATS also has its own fair share of conflict between its own prospective and contracting parties. The baffle lines have clearly been drawn. On the one hand are the traditional exporters of educational services, with their own in-built mechanisms of subsidizing and propping up the private educational institutions of their land and on the other hand are those countries, mostly those in the developing category whose educational system is basically funded and-run by the Government. The former category of countries by virtue of their head start in the field have acquired a Comparative Advantage and are in a position to capture foreign markets while the latter category of countries have sought to protect their Higher Education systems by citing the traditional "Infant Industry Argument".